Written by Stephen Moloney (www.twitter.com/TheCheeky9)

In a final round where the lead changed hands more times than a juggler’s props over the course of the first nine holes, Adam Scott eventually grabbed the Genesis Invitational up by the lapels at the devilishly short par 4 10th and, save for a dropped shot at 15, the handsome – and, you’d have to think, great smelling – Australian didn’t release his grip until his par putt hit the bottom of the cup on 18 and he’d secured a meeting with Tiger Woods to get his second trophy of the season.

Though they may have been bested by Scott at Riviera, however, many of the same star-studded field who descended on LA – along with some other superstar additions – have now already made the journey south and across the border in the hope of bagging the first WGC of not only 2020, but the decade, in the shape of the Mexico Championship, so, as I’m running late with this, let’s get straight into it.

Field Report

As you’d expect for a WGC the field is incredibly deep this week – as in, “reading 18th century poetry on a rainy day in Paris” deep. Seven of the current top 10 in the world are in the field – including the world number one, Rory McIlroy; last year’s defending champion, Dustin Johnson; and last week’s champion, Adam Scott. Sixteen of the twenty players ranked from 11 to 30 in the world are joining them – which includes some of the best European Tour players in Tommy Fleetwood, Louis Oosthuizen, Shane Lowry, Bernd Wiesberger, Matt Fitzpatrick, Francesco Molinari and Lee Westwood. And then nineteen of the twenty players ranked from 31 to 50 are rounding out the party – which means the likes of Sungjae Im, Cameron Smith, Sergio Garcia, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Graeme McDowell, Christiaan Bezuidenhout (who won at the weekend in South Africa) and Byeong Hun An will all be looking to walk off with a Wedgwood trophy crammed into their carry-on.

Or to put it in a much more simple way – whilst also flexing on you with my immense arithmetic skills – that’s 42 of the 50 best golfers in the world all looking to beat out not only each other, but those golfers just outside the top 50 in the world as well, for one trophy.

J-U-I-C-Y.

The Yardage Book

(i) Below you will find the scorecard for the Club de Golf Chapultepec, the site of the WGC-Mexico Championship since its inception in 2017. For each hole I’ve listed its par; what shape best suits it off the tee (except for the par 3’s); and its scoring average.

Front 9	Club de Golf Chapultepec	Back 9
#1: Par 4 – Fade – 3.690	Mexico City, Mexico	#10: Par 4 – Fade – 4.077
#2: Par 4 – Fade – 3.753		#11: Par 5 – Fade – 4.690
#3: Par 3 – 3.042		#12: Par 4 – Draw – 3.850
#4: Par 4 – Draw – 4.143		#13: Par 3 – 3.143
#5: Par 4 – Draw – 4.084		#14: Par 4 – Draw – 4.108
#6: Par 5 – Fade – 4.923		#15: Par 5 – Fade – 4.662
#7: Par 3 – 3.275		#16: Par 4 – Either – 4.031
#8: Par 4 – Fade – 4.328		#17: Par 3 – 3.045
#9: Par 4 – Either – 4.031		#18: Par 4 – Draw – 3.986
Out: 35	Par 71	In: 36

(ii) With its height above sea-level (approx. 7,800 feet) meaning connoisseurs of beefy drives get treated to the longest of long balls whenever this tournament rolls around, the “classic” nature of the Club de Golf Chapultepec’s design means, whilst being able to pound it off the tee is a help, given trees are waiting to gobble up wayward drives on pretty much every single hole, it’s imperative to pair that distance with accuracy as relatively small, slopey greens mean firing approach shots from the fairway will lead to less chance of getting out of position and on the wrong sides of holes. 

(iii) After Dustin Johnson broke the -20 barrier enroute to winning this event in 2019 – the second such time in the three years since it made the move from Doral to Mexico – with an impressive final score of -21 that saw him finish five shots clear of runner-up, Rory McIlroy, and a massive ten shots clear of the next nearest competitors, it’ll be interesting to see if the tournament director(s) will have tried to toughen up the course by growing out the rough a touch, narrowing the fairways or prepping the greens to gradually firm them up as the week progresses – all moves which, if implemented, could change the complexion of this tournament in a heartbeat, as the last two weeks at Pebble Beach & Riviera showed wonderfully.

(iv) The weather for the week is, as you’d expect for Mexico, looking like it’s going to be good with temperatures in the low to mid 20’s for all four days. In terms of wind? At this stage in the week it’s looking as though the field will see the breeziest conditions over the first two days, with conditions getting more and more benign as we move over the weekend. What could be interesting to watch, however, is that there’s a good chance just over a millimetre of rain could fall in the region of the golf course overnight on Thursday. Why is this interesting? Well, if you’re in the morning wave on Friday, the course might be just that little bit softer, so that makes firing at pins more of an option; also, what that rainfall could do if it falls is lead to the rough growing more than it might do otherwise and becoming that much more of a hazard.

(v) Below is the final top 10 and ties for the three years that the WGC-Mexico Championship has been in existence:

2019	2018	2017
Dustin Johnson -21	Phil Mickelson -16	Dustin Johnson -14
Rory McIlory -16	Justin Thomas -16	Tommy Fleetwood -13
Kiradech Aphibarnrat -11	Rafa Cabrera Bello -15	Ross Fisher -12
Paul Casey -11	Tyrrell Hatton -15	Jon Rahm -12
Ian Poulter -11	Kiradech Aphibarnrat -13	Thomas Pieters -11
Patrick Cantlay -10	Brian Harman -13	Justin Thomas -11
Sergio Garcia -10	Sergio Garcia -12	Phil Mickelson -10
Cameron Smith -10	Dustin Johnson -12	Brandt Snedeker -10
Justin Thomas -9	Adam Hadwin -10	Rory McIlroy -10
Keegan Bradley -8	Shubhankar Sharma -10	Tyrrell Hatton -9
David Lipsky -8	Bubba Watson -10
Joost Luiten -8
Tiger Woods -8

The Oracles’ Fourball

I thought the Oracles and I had turned a corner after last week – I really did. I mean, we got everything out in the air … had that meal of wild mushrooms and nettles together that only barely made me sick … and everything seemed so good when I left the cave that I didn’t even really notice the two-hour trek back to my house. I didn’t even get all that annoyed when I was accosted by a gang of particularly vicious wild deer and they stole my water bottle – that’s how good I felt.

But, just like the Pebble Beach Pro-Am a fortnight ago, when everything was said and done at Riviera on Sunday night, none of my fourball had cracked the top ten – though, somewhat frustratingly, two of my fourball from Pebble had done exactly that – and Jon Rahm’s tie for 17th was the best of the bunch.

What makes things worse, however, is that due to the storm we had here over the weekend – which, for those of you not from Ireland, was menacingly called ‘Storm Dennis’ – it left the four rivers I have to cross in order to reach the Oracles’ cave impassable, so for this week’s ‘Fourball’ I had to try and concoct my own version of the Oracles’ broth using what vestiges of it I had lying around in old bottles and combining that with a variety of mixers in order to give me the correct dosage. And, after trying several different cocktails that left me violently ill, I finally found that a combination of old broth, divot fill and good ole’ trusty pond water brought about roughly the same hallucinations as pure broth and, as a result, I present my mystical fourball for this week in Mexico.

Rory McIlroy: After a disappointing final round put paid to the possibility of him capping off the week in which he returned to the summit of world golf with the Hollywood ending that would have been winning the Genesis Invitational, McIlroy heads to Mexico with his eyes firmly set on becoming just the second player (behind Dustin Johnson) to complete the “WGC Slam” in winning all four of the WGC events, having previously captured the Bridgestone Invitational in 2014, the (as it was then known) Cadillac Matchplay in 2015 and the HSBC-Champions, of course, towards the tail end of 2019.

And given on the two occasions that he’s rolled in through the gates of the Club de Golf Chapultepec he’s never finished outside the top 10 (T-7 in ‘17 & 2nd in ‘19), if he can eliminate the mistakes that scuppered his round on Sunday, then there’s no reason why Rory couldn’t well complete said “WGC Slam” or, at least, continue his impressive start to the season that’s seen him finish T-3 at the Farmers and T-5 at the Genesis.

Tommy Fleetwood: Having taken a full month off since going back-to-back at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship (where he finished in a tie for second) and the Omega Dubai Desert Classic (where he finished in a tie for 11th) I’d expect to see a rejuvenated Tommy chomping at the bit to get back out on the course and set his season properly in motion against a world-class field. And when he’s doing just that at a course where he finished second when this event first came to Mexico in 2017 – before following that up in the proceeding years with finishes of T-14 and T-19 – I think with his ball-striking he might just go one better than what he did three years ago.

What he’ll have to do in order to give himself the best chance of doing that, however, is get his putter going early in the week, because in those two legs of the ‘Desert Swing’ that he played back in January – though in particular at Abu Dhabi – his putter was stone cold for the first two days, before then heating up somewhat over the weekend, but by that stage he’d left himself just too big a mountain to try and climb. And against the field that he’s going to be up against in Mexico, Tommy can’t really afford to let those guys get away from him on Thursday and Friday.

Xander Schauffele: After the undoubted disappointment of missing out on winning back-to-back at the Sentry Tournament of Champions – where he fell short in a playoff against Patrick Reed and, the eventual winner, Justin Thomas – save for a missed cut at Torrey Pines, Xander has bounced back well and posted finishes of T-16 in Phoenix and, just this past weekend at Riviera, a T-23.

With a solid record of six top 20 finishes in the ten WGC events that he’s played in, however – including a win at the 2018 HSBC-Champions – to see a player like Xander, someone 2nd in both ‘Strokes Gained: Off the Tee’ & ‘Tee-to-Green’, 7th in ‘Strokes Gained: Total’ and 4th in ‘Scoring Average’, heading back to the Club de Golf Chapultepec, somewhere that he’s posted two of those aforementioned six top 20 finishes, he might just permanently erase the disappointment of Hawaii in January with a win in Mexico in February.

Sergio Garcia: Though he hasn’t been exactly threatening to walk off with any silverware thus far this season – save for the briefest of dalliances around the top of the leaderboard at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship back in January – it’s still been a very strong start to the season for Sergio. Having played all three legs of this year’s ‘Desert Swing’, wherein he racked up two strong top 10’s & a tie for 23rd, a quick week off before last week’s Genesis Invitational sees Sergio heading back to Mexico – a place where he’s improved his finishing position every year since it first came here in 2017 (T-12 in ’17; T-7 in ’18; T-6 in ’19) – with a T-37 finish in his back pocket and the type of ball-striking and GIR % that could see him continue the upward trend he’s been riding for the last three years, yes, but also possibly see him join his fellow veterans, Lee Westwood & Graeme McDowell, in winning in 2020.

Title Image Photo Credit: Keyur Khamar/PGATOUR.com